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Video Games General
- Thread starter Smuthunter
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Scygnus
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Just came across an article about an indie game in development called Grave Seasons.
Farming sim cribbing off Stardew... But when you begin your game one random townsperson is selected to be a serial killer. And the rest randomly die until you catch the culprit.
It sounds kind of neat.
Farming sim cribbing off Stardew... But when you begin your game one random townsperson is selected to be a serial killer. And the rest randomly die until you catch the culprit.
It sounds kind of neat.
Jamesson Locke
Best Chunnibote
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Why the fuck does modding Deep Rock need you to use two different websites when the Steam workshop is right there?
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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age of wonder is good at faking that feeling
Jamesson Locke
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Been playing Pathfinder: Wrath recently. Lots of complex. Much options. Most of them just copy each other. Exactly the tabletop experience then. 
So far of the companions none have really stood out in all areas except the spider-hybrid, who's been consistently the biggest DPS of the lot by far, and is pretty interesting ... Shame about her being a total Starscream who will absolutely stab you in the back the moment someone that looks slightly more powerful comes along. Lot of companions rubbed me the wrong way though, like the obvious cultist.
Also four out of the seven early companions you get were orphans that grew up on the street. It's a stale backstory change the record.
Still I haven't encountered thebox legendary redeemed succubus companion yet, and she's supposed to be the best of the lot.
So far of the companions none have really stood out in all areas except the spider-hybrid, who's been consistently the biggest DPS of the lot by far, and is pretty interesting ... Shame about her being a total Starscream who will absolutely stab you in the back the moment someone that looks slightly more powerful comes along. Lot of companions rubbed me the wrong way though, like the obvious cultist.
Also four out of the seven early companions you get were orphans that grew up on the street. It's a stale backstory change the record.
Still I haven't encountered the
Tavarokk
Pursuer of perversion
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The question was actually spawned by me trying out AoW4 after being lured by the race editor hype only to discover how limited it is in reality and uninstall in vexation.
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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understood.
I personally can fall for the illusion, but that's admittedly only me
Vanargandr
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Which is weird because between Tewi being the boss of Earth Rabbits, the other lunarian rabbits, the only one hard worker is Reisen
And from what I remember of official material she is quite the serious one too and lives the Metal Gear life of being a Lunarian deserter while Eirin and Kaguya give negative fucks, then again its Eirin and Kaguya. Kaguya is literally immortal in all aspects, Eirin has even Tsukiyomi step lightly around her
Then again published manga also had grimdark touhou and Zun has officially stated nothing and everything is canon so just do whatever the fuck you want
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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So the new Zelda Game came out recenty.... and I can't bring myself to care about the story.
And after asking myself why, the answer came to me in a flash.
Drich's fanfic did so many of the same themes, but in a much more engaging way that I now look at the new game and feel dissapointed
And after asking myself why, the answer came to me in a flash.
Drich's fanfic did so many of the same themes, but in a much more engaging way that I now look at the new game and feel dissapointed
Scygnus
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Got back into Age of Calamity finally. Reached the real timeline divergence and was kinda blown away - especially after being confused about what happened in the previous cutscene since there's just mysterious light with no explanation.
Also got through HL2 Ep 1 VR mod- turns out it was Ep 2 where I stopped playing before, got them mixed up. On to Ep 2!
Also plugged in Fallout 4 VR- haven't gotten through the intro yet to really judge the control scheme- though it seems not great so far - but I stopped because my god the blur. Hopefully the mods correct that, once I get some QoL ones installed. Also FRIK because bleh on floating controllers.
Also got through HL2 Ep 1 VR mod- turns out it was Ep 2 where I stopped playing before, got them mixed up. On to Ep 2!
Also plugged in Fallout 4 VR- haven't gotten through the intro yet to really judge the control scheme- though it seems not great so far - but I stopped because my god the blur. Hopefully the mods correct that, once I get some QoL ones installed. Also FRIK because bleh on floating controllers.
Amazon Climber
Wholesomely Depraved
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It sounds kind of terrible. Who looks at Stardew and says 'you know what this game needs? More time pressure and less cast members!'?
Scygnus
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Control scheme is indeed funky. Made for other controllers, really. Pipboy use is especially awkward. FRIK not advised until after intro, so I haven't used it yet. Gonna set it up now, since I just got out of the vault. Also has its own control scheme on Steam so we'll see how that works.
Did get it unblurred with Contrast Adaptive Sharpening and it looks... well, as good as it ever did. Well, I also installed a graphics mod that makes it more vivid, but I'm not sure how much that changed.
Installed FallUI stuff, gonna test that before installing FRIK and some CBBE stuff.
Megaolix
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Now that ain't exactly fair.
Now, I have no idea about the fanfic but if they novellized the game... Well, duh. They had a hell of a lot more to start with than the devs who started from scratch and created the setting. And more cutscenes means pouring more money and time in it, it's not that simple.
Fanfics can afford to do that, it's literally just more lines. Programming that in a game is a helluva bigger deal. Adding the lines, rpogramming the scenes, programming the expressions, programming possibly any special character animation even if it's just moving hands...
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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So to summarize, Again is the fanfic and it like this holy amalgamation of Zelda themes into teh BOTW settings. Including turning into a dragon, the past civilisation, time travel, time magic, Purah growing up (and abuse of the youth tech) so on and so forth.
It's primary revolves around Link resetting timelines due to time magic shenanigans and he goes on this meta quest / char development . It's great.
I disagree in this specific case as I don't think it's that fanfic can afford it, as opposed to Nintendo going out of their way to make a gameplay first and story a distant fourth.
Which to be fair is what most people want... but I like more story focus and it just doesn't provide that for me
Megaolix
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You can complain fairly when they try to make a Zelda RPG then. Story-heavy is, as you said, not the central point.
And at times, I don't want my stories ultra-complicated and deep either.
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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Honestly... I think a big reason is that Elden ring probably skewed my expectation on what an open world game should be. Elden Ring has a lot of lore, and has a game framework similar to BOTW and TotK. And I'm not talking about the obscure stuff, but the parts that directly relate to how the mini quests is portrayed.
In contrast most Open world games just don't bother with that kinda story telling. TotK in this regard is very boring , but considering that it intentionally doesn't care about good story telling that's not a failure that matters.
In retrospect a similar thing can be said for Elden ring being that the gameplay can be overwhelmingly boring given that it is delibarately designed around the souslike formula which is orders of magnitude less flexible then BotW and TotK.
At any rate just like BotW before it, the story and lack thereof simply doesn't make me invested to play it for the same reason.
In contrast most Open world games just don't bother with that kinda story telling. TotK in this regard is very boring , but considering that it intentionally doesn't care about good story telling that's not a failure that matters.
In retrospect a similar thing can be said for Elden ring being that the gameplay can be overwhelmingly boring given that it is delibarately designed around the souslike formula which is orders of magnitude less flexible then BotW and TotK.
At any rate just like BotW before it, the story and lack thereof simply doesn't make me invested to play it for the same reason.
Evillevi
Shadow Pika!
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So on the topic of Apples and Bananas I'm going to shill for an amazing game and how it is so well designed in both in it's strength and in mitigating it's weaknesses compared to it's main stream Banana.
And that game is Cassette Beasts
So this is a review and TLDR it's an amazing Pokemon Like game that doesn't play anything like pokemon whatsoever. I suggest going in blind rather then read this review but if you don't mind some spoilers lets go dive into the game.
Cassette Beasts is made by a small indie team of like 2 peeps + some outsourcing where you are isekai'd into a weird world where everyone else is also an isekai and everyone can turn into weird monsters via cassette players and can change forms by recording monsters into cassettes. After the tutorial mission an eldritch being tells you (as you are the first ones to beat it) that the way back home is by beating up other eldritch horrors to get pieces of a riddle to find the way home.
So with that out of the way let's talk what makes this game great first namely, the combat and gameplay generally.
First let's start with tutorials. The game initially has basic tutorials for the basic stuff, but very quickly start teaching you mid and high level strats by being very clever and making Ranger Captains use solid and easy to implement strategies that any player can learn from and use. Things like exponential Invincibility buff, Melee nullification and revenge hits, range nullification, type changing, perma stun combos. And moves/passive abilities are transferabble to any compatible beasts and as such teh captains will give you a core component piece of their strategy if you win.
Secondly combat is deep. At first look likes doubles pokemon. But your moves are limited by how much energy you generate. Then you find out type advantages/disadvantages doesn't do extra damage, but inflict different, potent status effects . Then you find out moves and passives can be transferred between beasts and passive stacks as many times as you have room in your beasts. Then you find out the status effect includes changing the type for both enemies and players.
A consequence of how deep the combat system is is that you will run into challenges that use very powerful tactics with very different weaknesses forcing you to change your strat constantly in a cycle of self improvement.
Lastly the Combat and boss OST are bopping
Now let's go to the cons.
The story, dialog, and mini quest are really sparse. Unlike pokemon there's very little to keep you emotionally invested. You don't have partner pokemon, but forms to transform into. The characters simply can't reach the heights of say Cynthia or your rival or Leon as there's not enough material to get them to shine.
Additionally the MC is a literal blank slate. There's no meaningful choices and dialog to what choice is there doesn't change if you choose a second option.
But it does do one thing that Zelda Botw/TotK doesn't do well. Namely it goes out of it's way to hide the cons as best it can and due to the short play time it's mostly succeeds. It gives the illusion of story depth and development by rotating through many many characters with a little bit of dialog for each character.
All in all this is a great game and people should play it.
I rate it
10 Bopping songs out of 10
they're both r fruits at the end of the day .
And that game is Cassette Beasts
So this is a review and TLDR it's an amazing Pokemon Like game that doesn't play anything like pokemon whatsoever. I suggest going in blind rather then read this review but if you don't mind some spoilers lets go dive into the game.
Cassette Beasts is made by a small indie team of like 2 peeps + some outsourcing where you are isekai'd into a weird world where everyone else is also an isekai and everyone can turn into weird monsters via cassette players and can change forms by recording monsters into cassettes. After the tutorial mission an eldritch being tells you (as you are the first ones to beat it) that the way back home is by beating up other eldritch horrors to get pieces of a riddle to find the way home.
So with that out of the way let's talk what makes this game great first namely, the combat and gameplay generally.
First let's start with tutorials. The game initially has basic tutorials for the basic stuff, but very quickly start teaching you mid and high level strats by being very clever and making Ranger Captains use solid and easy to implement strategies that any player can learn from and use. Things like exponential Invincibility buff, Melee nullification and revenge hits, range nullification, type changing, perma stun combos. And moves/passive abilities are transferabble to any compatible beasts and as such teh captains will give you a core component piece of their strategy if you win.
Secondly combat is deep. At first look likes doubles pokemon. But your moves are limited by how much energy you generate. Then you find out type advantages/disadvantages doesn't do extra damage, but inflict different, potent status effects . Then you find out moves and passives can be transferred between beasts and passive stacks as many times as you have room in your beasts. Then you find out the status effect includes changing the type for both enemies and players.
A consequence of how deep the combat system is is that you will run into challenges that use very powerful tactics with very different weaknesses forcing you to change your strat constantly in a cycle of self improvement.
Lastly the Combat and boss OST are bopping
Now let's go to the cons.
The story, dialog, and mini quest are really sparse. Unlike pokemon there's very little to keep you emotionally invested. You don't have partner pokemon, but forms to transform into. The characters simply can't reach the heights of say Cynthia or your rival or Leon as there's not enough material to get them to shine.
Additionally the MC is a literal blank slate. There's no meaningful choices and dialog to what choice is there doesn't change if you choose a second option.
But it does do one thing that Zelda Botw/TotK doesn't do well. Namely it goes out of it's way to hide the cons as best it can and due to the short play time it's mostly succeeds. It gives the illusion of story depth and development by rotating through many many characters with a little bit of dialog for each character.
All in all this is a great game and people should play it.
I rate it
10 Bopping songs out of 10
Merge via Editchan
and that matters why exactly?
they're both r fruits at the end of the day .
Raven1138
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And a bit of good news there. According to MS, Cassette Beasts will be available on Gamepass next Thursday, so there is no excuse to miss it.
Amazon Climber
Wholesomely Depraved
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Note: I have not started playing yet. Love is letting your sister-in-law have the Switch indefinitely as a Mother's Day gift.
Scygnus
Well worn.
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Got a decent few mods up and running, including FRIK after a bit of argument with Steam about running the script extender from VR. Got Darker Nights and a better night sky mod... only for True Weather to decide to give me a downpour immediately the next night. Ghoul swarms during radstorms is turned off until I'm considerably higher level, if ever.
Only problem is FRIK eats your HP bar so you have to use your pip-boy to check- and it doesn't show your radiation level. So I'll have to use the gauge in the power armor for that. It's a known issue, so they'll patch it out once they figure out how. I'll cheat in extra Rad-Away if it gets too annoying, but radiation is pretty infrequent anyway.
Deathclaw seemed a lot easier this time, though that's probably because unlike the first few times I knew to aim for his stomach instead of his head and I could lower my arms to get around his lowered head. VATS in VR is pretty useful up close, but further away the highlighting of the target makes it impossible to see the sights on your gun.
Did have an error that got a baton stuck equipped so my character model no longer has their pipboy on due to using player.unequipall- but FRIK doesn't work with wrist-mounted anyway, so that's not a big issue until they fix that- I should probably look up how to do it but I'm lazy and it doesn't do anything anyway.
Only other problem is the control scheme has no bearing on my actual controller, being a scheme set for the Oculus controllers, so figuring out what button does what can be a bit of trial-and-error. This controller doesn't even HAVE a Y Button.
Only problem is FRIK eats your HP bar so you have to use your pip-boy to check- and it doesn't show your radiation level. So I'll have to use the gauge in the power armor for that. It's a known issue, so they'll patch it out once they figure out how. I'll cheat in extra Rad-Away if it gets too annoying, but radiation is pretty infrequent anyway.
Deathclaw seemed a lot easier this time, though that's probably because unlike the first few times I knew to aim for his stomach instead of his head and I could lower my arms to get around his lowered head. VATS in VR is pretty useful up close, but further away the highlighting of the target makes it impossible to see the sights on your gun.
Did have an error that got a baton stuck equipped so my character model no longer has their pipboy on due to using player.unequipall- but FRIK doesn't work with wrist-mounted anyway, so that's not a big issue until they fix that- I should probably look up how to do it but I'm lazy and it doesn't do anything anyway.
Only other problem is the control scheme has no bearing on my actual controller, being a scheme set for the Oculus controllers, so figuring out what button does what can be a bit of trial-and-error. This controller doesn't even HAVE a Y Button.
vyor
Oh that's cute
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Note: I have not started playing yet. Love is letting your sister-in-law have the Switch indefinitely as a Mother's Day gift.
100% accurate. They just... break the lore over their knee without giving 2 shits.
Ragnarok
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I realize that I will probably never get a switch so spoiled the game and this seems particularly egregious even by Zelda standards
Note: I have not started playing yet. Love is letting your sister-in-law have the Switch indefinitely as a Mother's Day gift.
Raven1138
Experienced.
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Another MK reboot.
I miss the days back when MK is both sexy and gory. Nowadays, it's just gory times to 11.
Well there is one thing they confirmed; the fulfillment of a 30 year pipe dream Ed Boon had when making the first Mortal Kombat. The first Kombat Pack features as a skin for Johnny Cage the Muscles from Brussels himself: Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Still, I am curious if some of the rumors around guest characters are true. According to scuttlebutt, the two likely ones are Peacemaker from James Gunn's Suicide Squad/HBO's Peacemaker and The Homelander from Amazon's adaptation of The Boys. If the latter is true, I hope a future DLC brings in Karl Urban as Judge Dredd, complete with a skin of Billy Butcher just for that opening cutscene between him and Homelander.
vyor
Oh that's cute
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10 million floppies, 20 million CDs or DVDs, plus the packaging, plus distribution costs which BASSICALLY DON'T EXIST ANYMORE...
Yeah no, stop coping, you're fucking wrong.
Digital_Devil
Attack and dethrone [YHVH]
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Kinda excited for the SF6 beta this weekend. Even better it comes out midnight tonight for the West Coast so I can play it not too long after I get home from work.
Also, in other Fighting Game news, the trailer for Asuka dropped for Guilt Gear and it's kind of nuts. His theme is really good and his moves look cool, but I'm kind of stuck on him casually going "Oops, I almost put out a star".
Also, in other Fighting Game news, the trailer for Asuka dropped for Guilt Gear and it's kind of nuts. His theme is really good and his moves look cool, but I'm kind of stuck on him casually going "Oops, I almost put out a star".
Winchester
Buzzkill
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I still buy my Nintendo titles as physical copies, so distribution costs still exist. And they've most likely sold more physical copies of BOTW than they ever did for Zelda 1 (IIRC there was a 50/50 split in physical/digital copies at launch, can't find a figure for how many they actually sold, but if it remained 50/50, then they've sold about two and a half times as many physical copies of BOTW as they did Zelda 1), so that's bunk.
Zelda 1 was made by apparently a staff of 7 people, or at least that's the public credits for the game. Tears of the Kingdom has 1148 people listed as developers, plus another 260 in the "thanks to" category (which are AFAICT the people they borrowed from Monolithsoft, so they're actually devs too). There's two hundred times as many people needing a paycheck, and those paychecks will be three times as large per hour on average just for the inflation, so even if they all only worked about as many hours on average as the 7 people who made Zelda 1 (fat chance of that), that's 600 times as much money.
Meanwhile, they've increased the cost of games since that time by at the most, 30%, with no accounting for inflation.
Yeah, some corps just want to milk people. Nintendo aren't entirely exempt. But I haven't seen any microtransactions outside of the *one time* DLC pass for any of their first party titles that I've played, and their online service subscription which is entirely optional.
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